


you swallowed everything

by magisterequitum



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, post 4.18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd dreamed of her once when he was shut away in a coffin that smelled of oak and linen. </p><p>Disappointment in her eyes and he wants to leave a ring of bruises along her collarbone. Purple kisses to mar her skin and give her something else to look at him for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you swallowed everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [but_seriously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_seriously/gifts).



When Klaus had driven the dagger into his chest, he'd dreamed of her. She wasn't the only one he saw, but it was her and her face at certain times. There's not much else to do when daggered; not completely asleep and yet not awake, a horrifying slow paralysis limbo where there is only blackness and whatever the mind brings up. Utterly alone and confined, unable to move though one thinks they should be able to. A Hell of a different kind than any mortal could conjure in their silly little books. 

There are no words in these dreams; others yes when it is his sister's face that swims before his vision, her mouth a cruel slash of anger and betrayal. 

No, she only stares at him with too wide liquid eyes heated with disappointment. An 'i told you so' if ever in a look, but no sound necessary to say so. 

Her gaze leaves a bitter taste on the tongue of a man who's lived for too long and shouldn't even care. 

 

 

 

He watches her move around town. He'd meant what he said when he could tell there was something off about her. He knows the reasons now too, not just the story she'd told him in Pennsylvania. Rebekah had told him the rest. He's seen the yellow tape cornering off the Gilbert home and the ashes still on the ground. 

Elena walks through town as if she owns it. Possibly maybe she truly does, the girl who manages to ensnare them all in some way or another. Uncaring and unfeeling of the others around her that watch with misguided concern. 

A fascinating study in just how much it takes to break a person.

Only he knows too well how unbreakable she is. Bendable, malleable, capable of being guided and moved, but never able to be truly slashed apart. 

There's blood on her jacket he can smell from across the square. Her lunch, no doubt, or maybe even a reminder to the two errant strays following at her heels. 

A queen as sure of herself as those he'd seen in the 16th Century a long time past. Only she wears no visible crown and her court is full of fools who underestimate her at every turn. 

 

 

 

Niklaus and Rebekah fight and bicker like always. Endlessly frustrating and he contemplates knocking their skulls together to see if that would help. 

The cure he keeps locked away where it cannot be snatched or stolen. He's uncertain as to his final decision for it, and there are more pressing beings running around Mystic Falls that need attention to it.

He's returned to them and yet nothing has changed. 

He's not sure if it's disappointment or stupidity at himself that clogs his throat. 

 

 

 

"Your Salvatores tried to steal the cure last night." 

Elena turns her head to look at him over the curve of her shoulder. Her mouth twists in displeasure. "They're not my anything." 

He almost laughs at her annoyance, the moue in the purse of her lips, the heavy glare she gives him. "I compelled them to stay away from the mansion." 

"Pity that's all you did." She tilts her chin and casts her eyes above the bar's shelves. "Though I guess at least they decided to leave me alone for a night. I was getting tired of having to send them messages." 

Her lips are stained red; not from any cosmetic. Though she may not possess her full emotions or the capabilities of feeling them currently, he knows too intimately how to tell her apart. To pick the lines of her face and the muscles that tick when she speaks and stares at him, to read what slides across her eyes, to decipher the little pieces of her that make her _her_. It's not hard to those who look. Only a fool wouldn't. She's too dangerous otherwise and he's learned his lesson from her. 

"Indeed," Elijah says, a quiet murmur, and he knows that his own face has shifted to show something that could be admiration; appraising humor as well. 

"Did you show up just to tell me that?" Elena slides her gaze back to him and then focuses all of her attention for the first time. "Or is there something else you want to repeat?" 

A lingering proposal that hangs in the air between them as her blood stained lips tip upward. He's nearly impressed by her audacity and bluntness. She is as enamoring as ever over him. 

 

 

 

He does not once think about making her turn it back on. 

 

 

 

(Only he does because he cannot help but think how easy it would be to do so.

He would need simply to reach out and pluck her chin between his thumb and index finger, a tiny bit of pressure to hold her still and give her a warning, to stare into those too wide eyes and tell her oh so easily to turn it all back on. 

He'd watch her eyes slowly slide back into awareness, neatly slotting all those messy human emotions back into place, her actions and those of others all coming back to her. 

He'd watch her cry and delight in it somewhat, he thinks. Her tears would be most satisfactory for the ashes he knows hold blood of his brother in the grass that remains on her front lawn. 

He'd like too to reach out and trace the would be slick wetness of them from her cheeks. 

A queen's tears only for him.)

 

 

 

He had meant what he told her in the alleyway in that small town in Pennsylvania. 

It rankles him so easily that she'd dismissed his letter and the words he'd wrote. A reflection of himself and the person he'd been and the actions he'd done, a reminder that he is no better than any of them. Carelessly burnt up with the rest of herself. 

He'd be more pressed if she'd not repeated word for word the lines of it to him. 

Now she's the mirror of himself, a living embodiment of his projections. 

 

 

 

He'd dreamed of her once when he was shut away in a coffin that smelled of oak and linen. 

Disappointment in her eyes and he wants to leave a ring of bruises along her collarbone. Purple kisses to mar her skin and give her something else to look at him for. To slide fingers along her waist and the dip of her spine. To mark her. 

 

 

 

Now she stares at him with red bruised lips and cheeks flushed with her feed and power, and he imagines how she'd look with a purple bloom of bruises again. 

 

 

 

Elena walks about town as if it is her own. 

Her fools follow behind and he curls his lips at them in a sneer. 

(He steps after her as well.)


End file.
